You might call it the train in vain. And it has troubling implications for a US plan to stoke East-West trade via a New Silk Road, as well as keep American and NATO troops well supplied in Afghanistan.
The Northern Distribution Network, the key re-supply route for US and NATO forces fighting in Afghanistan, is set to experience a spike in traffic due to the closure of the Pakistani-Afghan border. But it will take several weeks for the United States and NATO to work out the logistics of rerouting cargo.
US and European Union diplomats will be looking to reinvigorate the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe when a Ministerial Council meeting convenes in Vilnius, Lithuania, on December 6-7. High on the meeting agenda is a proposal to create a diplomatic rapid reaction team.
India would seem to have built-in advantages in trying to forge close relations with Central Asian states. It has a huge, growing economy, and, geographically, it is a neighbor. It also has historic ties dating back centuries; the Mughal Empire originated in what is today Uzbekistan.
It would seem that the Northern Distribution Network, the main supply line for US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, is soon to become a two-way street.
Commercial logistics companies operating on the NDN are on standby to start moving non-lethal freight out of Afghanistan as soon as the end of this year, according to transport industry insiders.
One sign of the how highly Lawrence Sheets is esteemed as an analyst of Central Asia and the Caucasus was the large turnout of his fellow journalists for his presentation of his new book, 8 Pieces of Empire: A 20-Year Journey Through the Soviet Collapse.
As they strive to control the flow of information in the Internet Age, Central Asian governments are moving away from a party-hack mentality and assuming the mindset of a hacker.
On the southern bank of a tiny river lined with concertina wire, half a dozen empty freight trucks are idling, waiting to enter Kazakhstan. Ken-Bulun may look like a minor border crossing between Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, but it is a doorway to a market of almost 165 million people – the new Moscow-led Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. And the truckers are growing impatient.
When NATO representatives meet with their Afghan and Central Asian counterparts in Istanbul on November 2 to discuss the “New Silk Road” project, they will try to play up its mutual economic benefits.
It may still be only on the drawing board, but Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s proposed Eurasian Union, an economic bloc of former Soviet republics, already is stirring concern in Armenia about the future of Yerevan’s independence from Moscow.
